A Black Lady Sketch Show contains examples of:
- Accentuate the Negative: The waitress in "The Negger
" is incapable of saying anything nice to anyone due to her own personal insecurities. She manages to come after her customers' appearances, ages, and drinking habits during just a short interaction. - After the End: The show starts out hours after the end of the world. We don't know how the world ended and it is simply referred to as "The Event."
- Alpha Bitch: Spoofed in "Bad Bitch Support Group", showing these women in a support group setting that turns out to be an experiment run by a cosmetics company discussing just how much effort they have to put into being this.
- The Assimilator: The Dance Biter does this with dance moves at a club, swiping them so the alien disguised as a human could gain their dances to impress their ex.
- Bait-and-Switch: A staple of the Coral Reefs gang sketches, as the gang leader will make threats over members' infractions before revealing a kind reward, such as an hour-long massage or a new phone.
- Beneath Notice: Exploited and Played for Laughs in "Invisible Spy". Her counterpart is similarly-built with an identical haircut, proving to have some Fearful Symmetry to boot.Gina Torres: Trinity is incredible. Her regular-looking face makes her nearly invisible in the field, but around here, she's a real legend.
- Bishie Sparkle: Omarion's appearances As Himself are accompanied by heavy golden sparkle effects and slo-mo.
- Break Up Song: Invoked in "On My Own", in which the woman being dumped is cursed to have Patti LaBelle appear nearby to sing the titular song until she gives in and sings along to soothe her broken heart.Denise: One time I got dumped in a restaurant - she had a whole fucking concert!
Patti: (Still singing) And it was excellent! - Cannot Spit It Out: Chris can not seem to able to give a simple answer.
- Captain Oblivious: The mother in the "What Up I'm Three" sketches is so hellbent on being a mother that she refuses to accept that her "toddler" is a full-grown woman. She becomes angry when anyone tries to point it out.Gerry: Uh... she's literally smoking.
Annie: (Smoking a cigarette) What up, I'm three.
Charlene: Look what you've done, Gerry! You have stressed this child out so much that she picked up smoking! - Conspiracy Theorist: Dr. Hadassah, by nature of being a female Hotep, espouses some tenuous beliefs about the world with an Afrocentric slant.Hadassah: "The Earth Is Flat and Other Reasons You Shouldn't Vote."
Gabrielle Union: But people should vote.
Hadassah: Why? Cast a ballot? Think about it: "Ballot" is just two letters away from "bullet." They want us to kill our community. - Couch Gag: Every episode of season 2 has a different cast member accidentally kill someone during the intro except for the last episode.
- Crazy-Prepared: Robin has her house fortified against the apocalypse and has packed a bunch a medical supplies. She has also has frozen single-serve... sperm in her freezer.
- Evil Sounds Raspy: "Baby" Annie's real voice, when she's dropped her pretense of being a toddler, sounds like a chainsmoker. She's an adult thief using her guise to rob people. In the 3K sketch, the teacher switches to the same chainsmoker voice when she reveals herself to be a drug dealer on the side.
- Fairy Godmother: The Fairy Auntmother appears to women on their Auntie-pendence Day, also known as their 35th birthday, to welcome them into their new role as aunties.
- Female Misogynist: Part and parcel with being a Hertep, Dr. Hadassah believes women to be inferior to their gods, also known as their husbands.Hadassah: The first topic is: women in the workplace. Why?!
- Identical Stranger: In "Reunited & It Feels So Weird," the group of women on vacation are confused when a stranger insists that she knows them, even more when she accurately describes each of their lots in life. It turns out there's an identical group of women also vacationing there who are this woman's friends, so much so that their outfits are the same.
- Likes Older Men: Gabrielle says she likes "mature" men and once went on a date with a man who was part of the Civil Rights Movement much to her friends' disgust. She found the date very informative.
- Literal Metaphor: A staple for variety sketches, like Dance Biter, which is about an alien club goer literally stealing dance moves.
- Motivated by Fear: In "Track Girl Magic," Coach Butler reveals her method for turning the worst track team into the unbeaten best over just a few weeks is simply employing a sleight-of-hand magician to terrify the deeply religious Mississippian women into sprinting for their lives away from the "black magic."
- Only Sane Man: A recurring gag with the "What Up, I'm Three" skits is that only one woman is initially willing to call out the situation.
- Overly Long Name: Dr. Hadassah Olayinka Ali-Youngman, pre-PhD has a long moniker. Her real name is Hailey.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Used regularly; Rome and Julissa is a setting update to Romeo and Juliet that adapts feuding families to fandom rivalry between Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. It has modern slang with mild swearing spoken in iambic pentameter.
- Starcrossed Lovers: Rome and Julissa is a parody of Romeo and Juliet, except with fans of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, respectively.
